Data transmission is an important application of many integrated circuit devices. Data may be transmitted according to different transmission protocols, and may be transmitted as serial data or parallel data. Data may also be transmitted within a circuit between registers. On common arrangement of registers which enables the transmission of data is a shift register. A shift register is a series of registers which continuously advances bits of a data stream using a clock signal coupled to the individual registers of the shift register. Accordingly, a bit of the data stream (bitstream) which is provided to an input of the shift register will be output at the end of the shift register after a number of clock cycles corresponding to the number registers making up the shift register.
Depending upon the functionality of the circuit implementing the registers, the registers may be implemented so that data in the registers can be changed. For example, a technique is known by which additional logic functions could be added to a design to implement a shift-register with common load behavior. That is, the conventional technique transforms an original shift-register queue in which all of the registers have a common reset (or set) behavior. However, such an arrangement presents significant limitations to the functionality of the circuit.